Moonland Featuring Lenna Kuurmaa: S/T

AOR/Melodic Hard Rock

4.0/5.0

Getting a boost back to the international musical stage is Lenna Kuurmaa, an Estonia singer and actrees. She's mostly known for her work with Vanilla Ninja, an all female pop-rock band had some international success in the early 2000's. Afterwords, she pursued a solo career, but now that solo career is being backed by Frontiers Records.

Lenna Kuurmaa: who punched her in the eyes?

As the label often does, they find a European singer, write some songs for her, and then build a band around her, often as a one-off project. In this case it's Moonland Featuring Lenna Kuurmaa, with composer and musician Alessandro Del Vecchio handling most of the songwriting duties and overseeing the production. Do the math putting label, songwriter, producer, and singer together, you know the sum. This is AOR melodic hard rock of the classic order begun in the Eighties.

Kuurmaa has a strong smooth voice fit for both pop and rock, at times reminding of a cross between Pat Benatar and Lita Ford, maybe some Robin Beck. The majority of the songs are about love, lost, found, and sometimes bitter. The music, as said earlier, is generally melodic rock, bit edgier from big riffs and strong drums, with nice appointed keyboards and stylish flaming guitar solos With Del Vecchio taking the lead in composition you're basically guaranteed some darn catchy material, with hooks in lyrics and arrangements, and you get it. Not to dismiss Ms Kuurmaa, but the music is rather impressive. Some favorite picks from the rock side were Another Day in Paradise, Out of Reach, Poison Angel and Crime of Love. There are two modest ballads with Open Your Heart and Live and Let Go, the former more a building anthem and the latter of the quieter variety with voice and piano. In light of some recent attempts at the same thing by the label, thinking Issa and Angelica projects, Moonland Featuring Lenna Kuurmaa is definitely on par if not a stronger effort than those. So, if female-fronted AOR melodic is your thing, this is solid and entertaining material. Recommended.

Alphabetical Index

If there is any band that put South American heavy metal on the world stage, it's Brazil's Angra. Formed better than a quarter century ago by guitarist Rafael Bittencourt, Angra has dropped eight albums and ... [ Read More ]